Robert Sciarrino/The Star-LedgerA Motorist traveling east on Route 46 in Denville passes under a overhead emergency DOT sign which reads, "Snow Emergency Abandoned Vehicles Will Be Towed."
Like Bill Murray in the movie “Groundhog Day,” New Jerseyans might well feel as if they’re stuck in time, trapped in the grip of the same swirling, snowy day.

For the third time this month, the region has been socked by a winter storm that’s expected to linger through the morning, fouling the work-bound commute with a blizzard-like mix of snow and strong winds.

The sense of deja vu had National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Poirier dubbing the winter “groundhog season” in honor of the 1993 comedy.

“This has been some succession of storms,” Poirier said. “Hopefully, researchers 50 years from now can figure out why we get these winters from time to time.”

The storm, a slow-moving nor’easter, was expected to drop 12 to 18 inches of snow across central and northern New Jersey, with the highest accumulations in the northwest, the weather service said. Much of South Jersey, already battered by record snowfall, was due to be hit by up to 6 inches, with greater amounts possible in the southwestern part of the state.

The slippery conditions began at dawn today and worsened significantly through the afternoon, leading to scores of flight cancellations at Newark Liberty International Airport, hundreds of minor accidents on the roads and several close calls.

In Middletown’s Leonardo section, an NJ Transit bus with six passengers aboard skidded into a utility pole on Center Avenue around 10 a.m. Neither the driver nor the passengers were injured, but because power lines landed atop the bus, it took emergency workers about 45 minutes to free those inside, police said.

Farther north, police shut down westbound Route 78 in Watchung for nearly an hour after a salt-spreader flipped over shortly before 8 a.m. Another dicey moment unfolded later in the day in Little Falls, where an NJ Transit train was involved in a low-speed collision with an NJ Transit bus at the Stevens Avenue crossing.

Matt Rainey/The Star-LedgerA snow plow passes by "Winters Drive" in Lebanon Twp. this morning.No one was injured in the 4:30 p.m. crash, in which the Dover-bound train clipped the front, passenger-side corner of the bus, NJ Transit spokesman Dan Stessel said.

With ample warning of the storm, many schools declared it a day off, and others closed early. High school sporting events, including the state skiing championship at Hidden Valley in Vernon, were postponed.

The weather also took its toll on New Jersey’s theater industry, which lives by the credo “the show must go on.”

Theaters in Millburn, Hackettsown, Long Branch, Morristown and Teaneck chose to cancel orchestral concerts, world premiere plays and a critically-acclaimed revival of “Lost In Yonkers” rather than ask ticket-holders to come out in the storm.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, scheduled to perform its “Best of … Fairy Tales” concert at the Community Theatre, decided to pull the plug and reschedule ticket-holders for the orchestra’s three other performances this weekend.

“It’s too risky for the patrons and musicians to drive in this weather,” said Gus Gomide, the orchestra’s vice president of marketing. Gomide said the orchestra had not cancelled a show since 2005.

As the day wore on, it was the wind that had forecasters most worried. A wind advisory issued by the National Weather Service was due to remain in effect until 1 p.m. Friday, with gusts of 50 mph possible.

Coupled with the heavy, wet snow, the wind increased the likelihood that power lines, utility poles and trees would snap or topple over. As of 10:30 p.m. Thursday, nearly 5,000 utility customers were without power, mostly in the Essex, Morris, Sussex and Union counties. That figure was expected to increase through Friday morning.

The storm is at least the fourth big blow to affect a large swath of the state this winter. While snowfall totals in northern New Jersey are well short of record territory — a whopping 78.4 inches fell on Newark during the winter of 1995-96, compared with the 33 inches that had fallen before today — it’s been one heck of a snowy February.

State climatologist David Robinson said hard-hit New Brunswick, for instance, will top 29 inches for February, the most in a single month since record-keeping began in 1894.

The National Weather Service’s Poirier notes a silver lining in all that bad weather.